Art On Fire

A letter in response to Calvin Tomkins’s article (December 5, 2011)

Calvin Tomkins, in his Profile of the sculptor Carl Andre, describes the indifference of art dealers to his early work, citing Richard Bellamy, who used Andre’s art as firewood (“The Materialist,” December 5th). But there is more to the story than that. In the fall of 1960, Bellamy opened the Green Gallery, on Fifty-seventh Street, and moved with his partner, Sheindi Tokayer, and her children into an apartment on East Broadway that had recently been vacated by Hollis Frampton and Carl Andre. Andre’s wood pyramids remained stacked in the living room. When, to her horror, Tokayer discovered that they harbored armies of cockroaches, Bellamy put them in the back yard. Although he repeatedly asked Andre to reclaim the art, his friend was noncommittal. At some point, Andre responded to Bellamy’s entreaties by saying, “Oh, burn them.” That winter, the plumbing froze in the uninsulated flat. At first, Bellamy burned old furniture to stay warm. But eventually he took Andre at his word and fed the pyramids to the flames.